I've been working on free software since before we knew that's what it was called. I keep trying to tell myself I'm not old enough to be an old fart yet... but...

I am now employed by HP's Linux Systems Operation. My principle role is implementing our evolving Linux distribution strategy, currently with emphasis on what we'll ship on products using the next generation Itanium Processor Family parts.

Other than my wife, kids, and current unit of German automotive engineering excellance, my principle obsessions are the Debian project, which consumes many nanoseconds per day... and various aspects of Amateur Radio, where I do silly things like build pieces of amateur satellites in my basement, and hang out in sunflower fields with radios and antennas as a VHF/Microwave Contest Rover .

In the Debian space, I've helped facilitate ports to 5 processor architectures, most recently instigating and still ringleading the ia64 port. I am the principle liason between Debian and HP. I maintain a moderately insane number of packages, including some that are base/essential like tar, gzip, and makedev, some that are popular but complicated to maintain like BIND and INN, and even a few that are downright obscure.

A list of some of the more interesting hunks of code I've contributed to the community over the years might include (very incompletely, more when I have time!)

the SMTP client, BM mail user interface, and essentially all of the user documentation and packaging of the KA9Q TCP/IP stack, which is still widely used in the amateur packet radio world

Projects

Recent blog entries by bdale

Been too busy to put anything here for a long time. I'm not
sure who really reads this stuff, but I guess it's at least
worth updating the bio information to reflect my move to
HP's Linux Systems Operation in May of this year.

3
months later, and it's still
pretty cool getting paid to work full time on making the
world safe for bits...

Well, I've been talking for a while about a complete rewrite
of the makedev utility, which I maintain for Debian. Our
version has forked quite a bit from the "upstream" version.
I really want it table-driven, and devfs throws some
interesting wrinkles into the mix. So, I went and created a
makedev project
at SourceForge... No turning back now!